Sunday, December 04, 2005

Jet lagged

On my way to visit my family (+13h flight), I finished Gene Kranz book "Failure is not an option" that I had started a few weeks ago. In fact, I was so close to the end before the journey that I finished it in the first hour ... hmm ... Anyway, I mostly enjoyed that book, which give a very nice insight into the business of flight control from Mercury to Apollo (and not much beyond that). As an Apollo's fan, I will have liked if it have been mostly about Apollo, but in fact most of the book is about the early days of the American Space Program .. oh well, it's still a great book by my standard. There was an interresting interview of Mr Kranz by Wired a few months back, right before the last flight of the shuttle. When asked if he thought that NASA was more risk-averse now than 40 years ago, he answers: "I think the entire nation is more risk-averse. Everyone's looking for guarantees." ... that's so true :-( Once I recover from my trip, I'll start reading the next book on my "must read" book stack "Moondust: In search of the men who fell to earth" by Andrew Smith. From some reviews I have seen on the web it's another great read.

2 Comments:

Welcome back! I hope France was somewhat calmed down from earlier in November (actually it was no trouble even when I was there, and I even got to taste the Beaujolais nouveau on the day it arrived!). Hope too that you had a good visit with your family.